Category Column Plugin

The Plugin

The Category Column is mainly designed to give our page a bit more of a newspaper behaviour. The plugin shows the latest posts from all categories with an offset of three posts (which are in the main column) on our homepage.

If there is a post thumbnail, it will be displayed above the headline of the post. No further text will appear. If there is no thumbnail, only the headline and the excerpt of the post wil be shown. When the plugin can detect neither the thumbnail nor the excerpt of a post, it will display just the first couple of sentences or (words) of a post.

This didn’t seem to be enough features to make it work for all themes and the less flexible ones missed out some possibilities. Therefore, we now have also the Advanced Category Column.

History

As the plugin was designed especially for the needs of „Was ist los?“, version 1.0 was just a working version of the plugin without any possibility to customize it. Category Column is tested on WP 3.9 and has now all the options to let it work as you want it to.

From on version 2.9.6 it speaks German and Dutch to you and up to version 3.9.1, we fixed a couple of bugs and made it more flexible.

Current Version

The current version is 4.4 and you can adjust basically all the parameters of the multi-widget now. How do you want the widget to look, how many posts do you want to display, what offset (always or only on the homepage)? The offset on the homepage is now increasing with pagination, so that you won’t have the same posts showing twice. Also, if the widget is showing on a single post page, that specific post is not appearing in the sidebar anymore.

Change Log

4.4 WP 4.3 ready. New framework
4.3 WP 4.1 ready. New framework
4.2.2 – Mistake in image class fixed
4.2.1 – Interference with WordPress Page Widgets eliminated
4.2 – DSS now compressible
4.1 – All ‚Divided by Zero‘ errors should be eliminated
4.0 – Much better ability to recognize images, more foolproof and more flexible
3.9.1 – More finetuning in the framework and more functionality
3.9 – Adjustment of the framework and more functionality
3.8.1 – Small Bufgfix with missing file
3.8 – Adjustment of the framework and more functionality
3.7 – Complete overhaul of the code. The plugin hooks into the Ads Easy Plugin, if wanting to use the Google AdSense Tags.
3.6 – The excerpt got more accurate, thumbnails work also when using galleries and correct ‚alt‘ and ‚title‘ tags are produced now
3.5 – The style textarea is now re-sizable and the input fields got smaller
3.2 – The plugin settings are now accessible from the plugin page and the widget works also with title slugs
3.1 – We switched back to homepage and on single post pages the post in the main column won’t show in the sidebar a second time
3.0 – The offset is now increasing with pagination on the front page of the blog
2.9.8 – Front page is taken instead of homepage now for more accurate working
2.9.7 – Small bug fix with Thumbnail
2.9.6 – German and Dutch translation added. Bug fix with Thumbnail for versions elder than 2.9
2.9.5 – Better working of the excerpt now. If there is no post thumbnail defined, the first picture of the post is taken as such.
2.9.1 – Small bug fix with the widget-style textarea and minor changes (widget is filled with default values at first use)
2.9 – The Category Column is a fully customizable multi widget now
2.1 – Plugin cleans the options database after itself on deinstallation
2.0 – Customizable for a bit and initial release
1.0 – Basic plugin only for our use

Installation

To install the Category Column Plugin simply download it here, unzip the file and upload the folder named „category-coloumn“ into the /wp-content/plugins folder of your blog.

Once you have done that, simply activate „Category Column“ in your plugin panel and customize the instances of your widgets, when you place them into your sidebars.

Screenshots

The working widget with WP 3.0.4 and the Atahualpa theme from bytes for all.Once the widget is in one of the sidebars, you start the configuration

Donation

If you use the plugin and like it, we appreciate a donation. If you find the plugin useful and like it very much, we appreciate your feedback even more.